The Bay Harbor Butcher's New Groove
by Mason Frey
Summary: Post-season two. Dexter evolving past the Bay Harbor Butcher, finding a new ritual. Updated every Friday.
1. Chapter One: That Night, a Forest Grew

Lila walks forward, briskly, her black hair sways slightly in the wind. She has my knives, I think. My heavy-duty trash bags, my duct tape. She has my supplies. She has my advantage. Her narrow face has somehow become slimmer and even more sunken over these months. Lack of sleep or lack of eating, to be frank, I don't care which one.

How is it, that whenever anybody looks my dark passenger in the face, I have to kill them, no matter their level of acceptance. It's unfair. I feel like I've been cheated while playing Candy Land and have to step into the swamp of the Chocolate Monster.

London has shitty pork sandwiches, their so ... clean. Miami has great meat. Hot, sticky meat.

When Lila finally comes back to her apartment, it's after dark, the rich, heavy dark blue sky holds the stars. The moon looks fat, and smug, a little Santa Claus, all knowing, observing us when we're observing it. The oblivious Santa, the oblivious humans.

The door creaks open, the wood shaking off the hinges. I am surprised by the level of quality her apartment holds. When I finally found her whereabouts, I suspected a trashy apartment, with trashy magazines, and trashy neighbors. The exterior of this palace is intimidating, gargoyles spouting water from their carefully crafted mouths, lips forming around words that will never dislodge off their tongues.

I swoop in behind Lila, and needles slips into her neck effortlessly, and she falls back almost immediately. "_Dexter," _she manages, her voice possessing a metallic rasp that has appeared recently. Her eyes are a violent blue. A deep navy of the sea, a whipping, thrashing maelstrom.

I place her on the couch, on top of a plastic bag. "Dexter." She says again, this time it's more of a judgement, like a mother scolding a child. I sink my knife into her, the blade playing the role of the R.S. Titanic and her chest the sea.

Despite being cheated, I feel nothing as the light of her eyes fades to gray, as the whirlpool goes calm, and a drizzle of blood snakes out of her lips. "Goodbye, Lila." I say, unemotionally.

When I walk out of her apartment building, the gargoyles are spitting pink and I don't pretend I don't know why. By the time anybody bothers to look, Lila will look brown and gray. Water will speed up the decomposition process exponentially.

Goodbye, Santa.


	2. Chapter Two: Morning Comes

_Kyler Polonik. You're here for a reason. _My voice cuts through the air that hangs above him, the dust swirls as he lets out a choppy breath.

"Who are you? What do you want?" His accent taints his voice, along with panic his words are almost incoherent. "Where am I? What is this? Oh, my God." He breaths these words almost. I know this trick, the little mind game, whisper so I listen.

"Olivia Borden. Taylor Nelson. Mean anything to you?" This is fresh meat.

"I don't know what you're talking about! I don't know! Who are you?"

"You raped them wearing a _Scream _mask."

"You have the wrong man! I do not know what you're talking about!" The fear is like a wave that keeps sloshing over his words, draining them of meaning. His bindings looked more like an elaborate cake than anything, first layer: rope, second layer: duct tape, third layer: more rope (I know this seems excessive, but I couldn't have another Chino on my hands), fourth layer: plastic wrap, fifth layer: chocolate icing. "Get me out of these! I have money, I can pay you."

"I don't want your money." It's impossible to keep men like Kyler calm, they will struggle and squirm and swear and promise for a good hour before they admit to their Mr. Hyde. I brush a piece of scum off of his wet forehead, and he looks up as if this was the heat before the burn.

"What are you doing?!" His voice is booming, and the veins in his neck strain tremendously, like ivy.

"Calm down. Let's get back to it –"

"Fuck you! Get me out of here!"

"Don't interrupt me, Mr. Polonik. Olivia Borden, what do you know about her?"

"Nothing, nothing, okay? Please!" It's scary to see such a powerful person, powerless.

"Rack your brain."

"Nothing, there's nothing there about this woman!"

"Raped and killed by you? That's not hidden in your noggin?" I smile slightly, a look at our surroundings, like the inside of a giant plastic bag. Although I can't perform my ritual, my precautions remain stable, I won't screw up my great winning streak because of the fact that the Bay Harbor butcher is dead. Big, hollow areas of plastic surround me, and I've never felt this claustrophobic.

"I am the wrong man! I do not know what you are talking about!" I could watch Kyler squirm, it is one of my favorite parts about this ... duty, but I have to be at Rita's in one hour. I grab the cleaver and let the light gleam off of it. I hold it in front of his face.

"Do you remember now?" I move the cleaver closer to his face, so close he can probably smell the polish.

"No, no, no. Please. Don't hurt me! Please!"

"Let me know how it feels to be thumb-less." I saw, and advance to his hands.

"_No! _Wait! I can tell you what I know! A man I know, Jeremy Sumpter, he did it, he told me!"

"Jeremy Sumpter has been in jail for fourteen years. I know. I did the blood spatter report." Oops. The last part just kind of came out. Now, regardless of whether Kyler is the _Scream, _he has to die. Has to. "Pick your poison, and pour yourself a glass. Knife or Black Mamba venom?"

"What?! You're crazy! Jeremy is free, he is free, out there now, raping women, killing women!"

"Your semen was found at both crime scenes, you don't know them and you ejaculated in their houses?"

"I've been around, okay, that doesn't make me a murderer!" He yells this excuse, and it almost sounds plausible.

"Knife or Black Mamba venom, Mr. Polonik?"


	3. Chapter Three: Typhoid Mary

_Brain clog: plunger needed. _Rita's baby doll face appears in the doorway, her wispy blonde hair windblown across her face. "Oh, thank God, you're here, Dexter." Relief explodes into her voice, and she pulls me in by the shirt. "Cody has got the chicken pox, and we're trying to keep Astor ..."

"Quarantined?" I add, and her smile breaks ground.

"Yeah. Quarantined. Listen," her smile fades, and the wrinkles around her nose appears. She's wants something.

"What is it?' I asked, agreeable. It was still a subtle disconnect between me and Rita, despite Mr. Romance being back in town.

"I know it's a lot to ask, but could you take Astor for the night?" I paused, my lips hanging in the air. Kyler's soon-to-be-fragrant corpse strewn in a garbage bag across the backseat. "It's too much --"

"No. I can do it. Just give me a second. I have to make a call." The smile floods into her face again, and she kisses me lightly. Her kiss was light and unemotional. I bolt back to the car as soon as Rita's waifish figure recedes past the doorway.

I whip open the door, and drag Kyler out. The bag was heavier than I remember, and great grabs of Kyler's flesh is hard to hold on to. Kyler's body lands on the concrete with an skull-splitting crack. Oh, great.

Rita's door creaks loudly, and I can hear her slippered foot patter approaching us. Us is me and a rotting corpse.


	4. Chapter Four: Till We Meet Again

"Dexter?" Her voice rings around the short corner, and I throw myself down towards Kyler, who is half in the car, half out, his legs resting in the backseat. I can hear the blood gushing out of his head. "Are you okay?" I get up again, efforts of manually shoving him under the car superficial. I swing a roundhouse kick to the side of his faceless body, and he legs hop out of the car, he's lying on his back, and Rita's in sight.

The darkness blankets us, but not entirely, not enough to miss a body bag at my feet. "What's going on?" She asks simply, concern furrowing her brow.

"Camping."

"Sorry?"

"Camping supplies. I have them in my car, thinking of buying a cabin, and they ... fell out." The words come out in a jumble, before I can lie to my fullest ability. I guess my icy, murderous subconscience is charitable today.

"Oh, I can help you with that." She grabs Kyler's head, and helps me hoist him into the backseat. I've never felt closer to her. I half-expected for her face to bunch up, for her to point at it: _Dexter, this isn't ... ? _But she never did, instead she helped me lay him across the backseat, and on her way out, kneed him in the crotch. My darling.

"Astor will be out in about ten minutes, you can come inside if you want." I follow her through the door, and into the inside of her charming home. The walls have been repainted "candy apple green", a dainty light shade of green. I helped her paint it. I asked her to pick "scarlet sensation", and she said it was too passionate.

Everything is silent, the kind of quiet where you can hear Rita's heart pumping her hot blood. "So," she says with a giggle. Her voice tosses and turns restlessly with a series of "uhm"'s and "uh"'s before she finally spits out what ever she's chewing and kisses me. It's a different kiss, an emotional kiss, a Kodak moment. If I felt anything, I'd feel it now.

Astor's pink and flustered face appears in the hallway, scared to interrupt and scared not to. "Mom?" Rita pulls back automatically, like a piece of ungreased machinery, like her joints are sandpaper.

"Oh, sweetie. I'm sorry. I was just thanking Dexter for taking you."

"No, it's not that ..." Astor sighs, and her eyes dance around the room in serious need of distraction. Her shaky hands pull up her shirt slowly, revealing her blotchy, pale skin. Looks like quaratine no more.

"Oh, Astor. You have the chicken pox too?" Rita says this, half-pity, half-frustration. She bends down to Astor, a dainty hand resting on Astor's bony shoulder.

"I suppose. I didn't even go near Cody."

"She didn't have to. A pillow, a towel, a toothbrush, tooth paste even." I interject, opening my arms out, shrugging. I wonder if Kyler has flies.

"Oh, Dexter, I'm sorry you had to come out here."

"It's fine, Rita." I bend down, and kiss her once, and leave without another word.

Kyler isn't as bad as I'd feared, a bit smelly, a bit ... mushy, but overall, he isn't the calibur of decomposition I'd worried. Whatever the rate, my previous friend the alligator was all to eager to sink his teeth in. The cracking of the bones reminds of those poppers on the Fourth of July, the same interesting and unparelled _pop. _

What to do with the chew toy remains that he leaves me, I'm not sure, maybe burnt, maybe dumped in the water, maybe buried, maybe tossed. I don't know. It's just an open book.

_ENGLAND_

"She's not dead, madam_,_ merely in acoma." Spoke a doctor between his teeth.

"But, she looks so ..." Spoke a mother between her sobs.

"Lila West is alive and well,I promise you."


	5. Chapter Five: Folie a Deux

Masuka's chubby, irrelvant face appears at my desk, a smile taped on to it like a reminder of my irregularities. "What are the two biggest lies?" He says with his fist in his mouth. He couldn't wait to get out this lude joke.

"What are they?" I say dryly.

"I won't come in your mouth, and I will pay you back." Masuka lets it out unstifled, a big roar of a life that echoes around the station. I laugh quietly, forced. He notices my nonreaction, and his smile is ironed flat. "What the fuck is wrong with you? That was a hilarious joke." His hands form fists in frustration as he walks away.

Everybody here is still in a strange phase about Doakes, especially Maria, she's like a walking 1-800-Depression billboard. Everytime you see her, there's smeared make-up or a cigarette dangling from her heavily painted lips. She walks aimlessly, even when she has a direction. Sorry, LaGuerta. I felt like a dog with it's tail in between it's legs.

"Brother Morgan!" Debra's unseen presence works into my view, her hands swinging around her wildly, like a ten-year-old at Toys-R-Us, impatient to get home. "Guess what?"

"What?" I say, shrugging. Deb usually talks without saying anything, so I tune out, and take a risky glance at the newspaper that hangs heavy over my conscience. There it is. Front page. "The Bay Harbor Butcher ... a police sergeant?" The headlines topple over everything else, a small insignificant article about a bank robbery or a reunited couple. A picture of Doakes and his menacing scowl. A picture of me is all I can see. "_So?" _Deb's voice is increasing in volume. "Were you listening to me?"

"Yeah."

"What the hell did I just say?"

"Something about Lundy."

"Jesus Christ, Dex." She stomps away in heat, chomping furiously on her minty gum. It's a new habit. It's either a piece of Orbit or a Marlboro.

Back to blood spatter, the sticky red that sets my nerves on fire. Wet scarlet photos paper the walls around me, a sordid surrounding for a twisted soul. God, if that isn't out of a Dr. Phil novel.

Maria bursts out of her corner office, her skin even more leathery than usually. A Parliament bouncing around her lips, the filter stained hot pink. "What the fuck is this?" Pascal flashbacks. "These are so goddamn sloppy, Masuka. What are you thinking? Killers will walk free because of your dumb-ass report! Jesus Christ!" She runs back into her office, the door slams. The whole place should be in uproar about this, right? Not really, nobody really cares anymore. Maria has broken down, it's only a matter of time before she and Pascal are swapping horror stories at the local bar.

My phone rings, and I clutch it, bringing it to my ear. "Hello?"

"Hey, Dexter. I'm pregnant."


End file.
